


Connection

by rhodrymavelyne



Series: More Than a Jinrou [11]
Category: Shiki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 17:11:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18197018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodrymavelyne/pseuds/rhodrymavelyne
Summary: At long last, after everything that's happened in Shiki and in More than a Jinrou, Toshio and Seishin talk...among other things. :)=





	Connection

**Author's Note:**

> This is Part 11 of More than a Jinrou, my ongoing Shiki fanfic which takes place After the Explosion. :)= Yuuki Natsuno is discovering just how unusual a jinrou he is as his relationships with Tatsumi and Ozaki Toshio change and deepen. Yet he's not willing to leave Toshio with a broken heart over Seishin, even if that means losing him. 
> 
> I don't own Shiki, but it sometimes owns me. :)=

Three vampires withdrew from a room, leaving one alone with a human. 

Never had Toshio felt more human or helpless. Not that he was going to admit this. 

“So that was Kirishiki Sunako, formerly of Kanemasa.” Bitterness rose in Toshio’s throat. He stared at Seishin’s unbuttoned collar, the long, graceful neck. 

It was the one part of him Muroi Seishin teased the world with. He exposed that one part of his body while the rest hid beneath a priest’s garb. One hint of exposure, the secret defiance coiled within him. 

How the okiagari must have loved him. They probably drooled every time he walked by. 

“A bit young for you, isn’t she?” Hypocrisy, yes, but the bitterness was pouring out, scalding his lips. 

“How dare you?” Seishin sprung from his seat with a swift violence Toshio hadn’t realized he possessed. The former priest reached out, grabbed the lapels of his former friend’s jacket, and pulled him close to him. “You walk in here, reeking of Yuuki Natsuno! Every inch of you smells like blood and sex!” Seishin bared his teeth, canines sharper than they’d ever been. “I may have fallen, Toshio, but so have you!”

“I may be having sex with an underage boy, but I didn't abandon you.” Toshio hung in Seishin’s unnaturally strong grip, but raised his head to look the other man right in the eye. He refused to be afraid of Seishin, no matter what he’d turned into. “Not the way you abandoned me.”

“Abandoned you? By turning my back on a pool of blood and a gory stake? By refusing to clean up the mess as you demanded? A mess that was once your wife?” Blackness swam through Seishin’s brilliant green eyes. “I looked at you and I saw the future, Toshio.” 

Abruptly the former priest released him and backed away. Slumped, dropping his chin into his hand as if his own fit of violence had exhausted him. “I saw the brightest and most beautiful person I ever met turn into a monster.”

This was the truth Seishin could never say, held back and strangled in his silence. It was finally out in the open, lying between them. 

“What was I supposed to do? Let the village die?” Toshio hate the raw, pleading note in his own voice. He clenched his hands into fists. “Turn my back and let the dead kill the living?”

“Instead you let the living kill the dead. Toshio, I cannot simply see people as groups, living or dead.” Seishin lifted his head, let his hand fall to his side. 

“You saw Sunako.” Toshio swallowed his bitterness, tried to listen. One of the reasons he may have lost Seishin is he didn’t listen. 

He had an uneasy feeling that whatever faults Kirishiki Sunako might have, she was a good listener.  
“Sunako and I offered each other companionship, an ear that heeds and understands each other.” A pale tear ran down Seishin’s equally pale cheek. “I offered her an oasis from the grand experiment that ended in tragedy. She offered me sanctuary from you.”

“Grand experiment. Sanctuary from me.” Toshio let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “You know what the difference is between you and Natsuno? Besides your age? He saw I was drowning in despair and he offered me a hand.” Hot wetness blurred Toshio’s sight, the vision of Seishin’s remote beauty. “You walked away.”

“I needed peace. I needed to step away from the violence.” Seishin wrapped his arms around his thin body and bowed his head. “Sunako, for all her lust for blood, seemed like a less brutal choice.”

“So you ran to Sunako and hid in a snug little illusion of peace.” Toshio let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “I wouldn’t know peace with the shiki, if it sank its fangs in my neck.”

“Maybe the peace I sought was an illusion. I’ve never known rage like you do, Toshio. I see the same rage in Natsuno.” A wrinkle appeared in the center of Seishin’s forehead. “Not even an entire village was enough to quench it.” The condemnation had a touch of admiration within it and perhaps something more. 

Envy? Was that envy he was hearing in Seishin’s voice?

“You must be joking.” He let out a chuckle softer than the ones before. “You with all your beauty and grace, who is enraptured with learning for learning’s own sake, you're jealous of something like that?” Toshio ducked his head. “You were so remote, so untouchable. High above me and out of reach, with or without your family.”

“I was never untouchable.” Seishin shook his head. The wrinkle in his forehead deepened. “I was right there, waiting for you. Only you were always turning away, turning your attention to someone else.”

“Someone else? Who else was there?” Toshio laughed again, feeling something release in his mouth, spreading across his tongue. “My mother? My patients? My wife?”

A flash of memory struck him of Natsuno going down on him in the darkness, bringing the shuddering release he’d always fantasized having with Seishin. He’d never allowed himself to admit that, except in the most private moments in the dark. To think he’d had it with someone else, but it had been exquisite. 

“All of them. Everyone.” Seishin lifted his hand as if he meant to touch Toshio, yet he dropped it at his side. “You were always moving on, Toshio, to the next person who needed your help. The only time you were truly with me was when I was bleeding out the wrists.”

“I hated you at that moment.” Toshio shut his eyes. “I hated you for making me feel so powerless. Almost as much I hated you when you turned your back on me.” 

“I couldn’t believe what you'd done. You were the kindest person I’d ever met. All of your rage and frustration seemed to well up from that kindness.” Seishin kept his voice hushed, barely above a murmur. “Every time a patient of yours died, you died a little with them. You gave your heart and soul to the village I was only going through the motions of serving.” Pain cracked into the words, bleeding through the softness. “How could you betray everything you were?”

“What?” Toshio flinched at this, at the anguish as much as the accusation. “How did I betray you?”

“Not me! Yourself!” Seishin clenched his hand into a claw, tearing at the air between them. “You were never just a human, even when we were both human. You were the best man I knew!” He lifted his spasming fingers, shielding himself. “And you showed me just how brutal the best could be!”

Seishin dropped his arms, shaking at his own words.

Toshio stared at him, open-mouthed, trembling right along with his former friend. How many times had Seishin relived the moment of walking into his office, only to find Toshio standing over the bloody remains of his wife?

Perhaps as often as Toshio had.

“I didn’t know what else to do.” Such a hollow excuse, but it was the truth. “No one would believe me. Everyone in Sotoba refused to accept what was happening.” Memories of people smiling, laughing, trying to pretend nothing was wrong, ignoring his silence, his plea for help. “The village I’d devoted myself to turned its back to me, even while it drained my soul.”

Only this wasn’t true. He’d already killed Kyoko at that point. He hadn’t asked for help until he had evidence of his claims. He had to have evidence. Otherwise, he would have been laughed at, just as Itou had been. 

What was the price of that evidence? What had it been worth, proving to the village he was right?

Sotoba had still burned. 

“Toshio.” Seishin parted his lips, his expression softening. Ah, yes, this was the face which haunted a thousand dreams, taunting him from many a memory. There was no escaping these sad green eyes who saw him, Toshio. Not Ozaki-sensei. They refused to release him, to allow him to stop. 

“I detatched myself so I could concentrate on each action. Lifting the scalpel. Cutting the dead flesh.” Virgin and raw, the words started to trickle out. “I told myself it was dead flesh. I’d watched Kyoko die. Watched her rot until the shiki pulled her back.” He kept his voice calm, reasonable. “What remained was shiki. Whatever cried and pleaded with me was the very thing that killed her.” 

Toshio swallowed, for a moment losing the words along with his nerve. He closed his eyes, opened them, only to see those glistening green orbs gazing back at him. 

“I concentrated on the tools at hand. Tried each tool, no, each new weapon. What would stop the shiki?” Something tightened in his chest, squeezing. “I’d been backed into a corner. My home was doomed, if I didn’t pick up every weapon, find the strength to use it. Everyone was doomed if I didn’t ignore the shiki, who was using my wife’s tears against me.”

Toshio lifted a hand to touch his head. He hadn’t done anything like that while he was conducting the experiments. He’d focused upon the knife, the chemicals, the stake. Everything else he’d blotted out. 

“In the end, I had to gag her. If I hadn’t gagged her, I might have listened to her. If I listened to her, I would die. Everything I’d learned that night would be wasted.” Toshio gazed at the trembling lips, the horrified wonder upon his face. “I had to save lives, even if I had to kill a creature struggling to survive on a semblance of life.” 

“A semblance of life, yet it was life nonetheless. You were willing to take it to save others. You were willing to kill.” Seishin closed his eyes. “How like Sunako and Tatsumi you were.” 

“And yet you chose them over me.” Toshio shrugged, only to have a shudder ripple through his torso. “You preferred their struggle to mine.”

“At the time, they made more sense to me. Vampires killing to survive didn’t seem as terrible as one committed to saving lives deciding to take them.” He lifted his hands. “I understood them, Toshio, but I couldn’t be like them or you.”

“And now? Have you killed to satisfy your hunger?” Toshio tilted his head to one side, once more exposing his neck. How did Seishin react to such a display? “It took every bit of strength Natsuno possessed not to feed. When I offered him my wrist, I could see how much he craved the blood, even though he tried to refuse.” 

Only now Natsuno was no longer having to sink his fangs in. What had changed? What was different about the boy who’d told his tragic tale in Sotoba and the one who now shared his bed? 

“Yuuki Natsuno-kun is an extraordinary boy. I won’t deny that.” Seishin opened his eyes. Darkness filled them, swallowing their luminescent green. “Sunako has brought me blood from time to time. Sometimes I drink it. Sometimes I don’t.”

“Once more you are caught in the middle.” Toshio raised a hand to brush a stray hair away from his forehead. “How long do you plan to remain that way?” 

“I never planned to betray you, Toshio. Everything that happened took me by surprise.” Seishin lifted his own arm, mimicking his former friend’s gesture. “Sunako appeared to me on the temple steps one night. Out of the darkness this little girl appeared and told me she enjoyed my books.” The former priest drew a long, shuddering breath. “She talked about them, showing an interest in the ideas and feelings which lay behind them. In doing so, she coaxed me to open up in a way I never had. Not even with you.”

Toshio studied the slight bump in Seishin’s slender throat, how it quivered with the inhalation. Did he even need to breathe?

Natsuno didn’t. Not judging from certain bedroom…accomplishments. Heat rushed to Toshio’s face. He ducked his head, avoiding his former friend’s eye. 

No, he doubted Seishin needed air, not any more. It was just as a habit, in all likelihood. 

“I can guess what you’re thinking, letting yourself be distracted from philosophy by the physical.” Red rings within the darkness of Seishin’s eyes fixed themselves upon Toshio. “I can still breathe. I can see the darkness of death, clinging to Sunako with tiny hands.” This was the midnight eye of a shiki. “Traces of the dead clutch at her, clutch at us all. I can see them following me, but I could always sense them. I heard their cries back when I was human.” He dropped his hand, touched the scar upon his wrist. “I could never escape from them, Toshio.”

“Seishin.” Toshio reached out his own hand to touch that inhuman flesh. Flesh which once belonged to a vulnerable, sensitive boy, who was still vulnerable. “I fear the change makes you more truly what you are.”

Just brushing his fingers against that cool skin was electrifying, yet jolted him with a warning energy. 

Was it because Toshio had been bitten by another? He dropped his hand, only to gaze his friend’s wrist, the scar which remained upon the fair flesh. For the first time in months, he longed for a cigarette. 

At some point he’d stopped carrying a pack. When had he quit? Ozaki Toshio had been steadily increasing the amount of cigarettes he smoked ever since Sotoba started dying. When had he tapered off?

“I sometimes wonder if it isn’t about changing at all, but releasing yourself.” Toshio sighed, letting a hand rummage in his empty pocket. “Letting out whatever was held in check by your humanity.”

“Not you, Toshio.” Seishin frowned at him, studied his shifting arm. “You’ve been smoking yourself into an early grave ever since you devoted yourself to your duties in the village.” He leaned a little closer to his friend. “You haven’t reached for a cigarette. Not even once.” 

Toshio trembled at the proximity. A part of him tingled with the old longing brought on by Seishin’s lips, neck, the lock of lavender hair curling right at his temple. At the same time, the warning bolt of energy sang through his neck and chest. Another jinrou other than his own was getting close. 

Heh, was he that far gone as far as Natsuno’s hold over him was concerned? Seishin had been his closest friend, his most intimate companion, yet somehow untouchable, keeping the core of himself hidden. 

When was the last time Seishin had truly bared his soul to him?

“We’re more than just tools for our family lines!” Young, quivering with the fear of caged animal, Seishin had turned on him. 

“Hm?” Blinking, half in a daze, the cool facade of unconcern Ozaki Toshio was building to deal with his old man fell into place without Toshio even thinking about it. 

Rage and the old man will bluster all the more. Give him nothing, nothing to feed his anger. Nothing but cool logic and rationality. 

It gave Ozaki Toshio the impression of being cold, but it chilled his father’s wrath, enabling him to deal with him. To deal with everyone in Sotoba, no matter how upset they got. 

“We have the right to live freely.” Like a wave cresting, Seishin’s words, his passion crashed over Toshio, leaving him behind. 

He’d missed the moment. This had been Toshio’s chance to get close to Seishin, when the other boy lost control of his emotions. 

“Seishin.” What had he felt during that rare chance? What had he said? “We’re not just tools. We’re links in a chain, connecting other people to us. Holding them together.”

“What are you saying?” Seishin had fixed luminous green eyes upon him. “Are you willing to just accept the role your father imposes upon you?”

“No.” Toshio had shook his head. “I want to surpass him. I want to be a better doctor than he ever was.” He smiled a little. “Even as a tool, I have that much freedom.”

Seishin smiled, yet the light in his jade orbs dimmed. They were never quite as bright after that. 

Yes. His friend began to withdraw after that, retreating behind his own barriers of courtesy and softly spoken words. 

It wasn’t until Ozaki Toshio had something else to compare it to did he become aware of this retreat. 

“Natsuno.” Toshio murmured his little vampire’s name amidst the clarity. Natsuno had never been remote. He’d run away, withdrawn, but he always returned, getting closer every time he did. “I haven’t smoked since Natsuno first found me in the city.”

He raised his hand, marveling at the steadiness. Once it would have shook after an extended withdrawal from nicotine. “I haven’t needed or wanted a cigarette since. Damn it, Seishin, I didn’t even notice I’d quit.”

“He’s definitely more than the average jinrou, your Natsuno.” Seishin backed away and crossed his arms. His former friend looked so much more willowy and delicate without the priestly garb. “Remarkable how you’ve rejuvenated yourself with a boy half your age.” The word stung with the sharpness of a vampire fang. “I don’t see any of the exhaustion in you I felt when I fed Tatsumi.”

“You fed Tatsumi?” Toshio swallowed, feeling a vein throb at his temple. “It wasn’t Kirishiki Sunako who drank your blood?”

“I keep trying to tell you we don’t have that sort of relationship.” Seishin studied the ground, his mouth twisting. “I’ve never laid a hand on her and she’s never laid a fang on me. It’s part of what makes our bond unique for both of us.”

“Tatsumi turned you.” Anger continued to pulse in his veins, yearning to be released. Toshio swallowed, held it in check. There was something important here, something to discover. He just needed to give his wits time to overtake his temper. “Maybe you’re right.”

“What am I right about?” Seishin laid a hand against his forehead. “If you want to tell me how mingling sex with blood drinking has energized you, I don’t want to hear it.”

“That’s just it. It shouldn’t have.” Toshio reached out to clasp his old friend’s hand. “Seishin, stop being shocked or offended for a moment. Just listen.” 

The former priest allowed his hand to be claimed. He pressed his lips together and gazed at Toshio’s face.  
“We’ve both seen countless victims drained of their blood by the shiki. I should be tired, lethargic, too exhausted to move. It’s how I felt when Kirishiki Chizuru bit me for the first time.” The former doctor placed his other hand upon Seishin’s shoulder. “Isn’t that how you felt when Tatsumi fed on you?”

“Chizuru-san bit you?” Seishin’s lips parted in shock. “I thought Sunako was going to leave you alone.”

“Oh, Sunako might have. The mistress of Kanemasa let me know well in advance she’d be paying me a visit one night.” Toshio let out a brief, humourless chuckle. “Not that she got much satisfaction out of me. It’s no longer important, Seishin.” He shook his head, trying to dismiss the swimming sensation which always accompanied the memories of fangs piercing his neck, mocking, feminine laughter, and those red lips waiting in the darkness, the same darkness waiting in her eyes. 

In the end, it had been the memory of Natsuno’s eyes, bloody violet which burned through the shadows, the echo of his words. “Be true to your own heart and wishes. No matter what anyone else tells you to do.”

Always, Natsuno. You set me free. Do you have any idea what that means to a human in a world full of monsters, ready to enslave him with their bite? I could lay the entire world at your feet and it wouldn’t be enough. 

Yes, Yuuki Natsuno was special. Just how special? This was what Ozaki Toshio needed to find out. 

“You went it through it, too. Being drained of your blood.” Toshio shook his head, tried to focus. “Didn’t you slowly weaken, becoming more exhausted and sleepy? Wasn’t that how it was right to the end with Tatsumi?”

It was an effort not to spit out Tatsumi’s name. Tatsumi had been the instrument through which the Kirishiki had sucked the life out of Sotoba. He’d tricked Kyoko into giving him access to the Ozaki clinic, invading Toshio’s family home, his sanctuary, opening it up to other okiagari. 

He’d probably been the one who killed Kyoko, unwittingly giving Toshio the means to learn the shiki’s weaknesses. 

He was sleeping with Natsuno, holding Natsuno in his arms, perhaps having Natsuno in all sorts of little ways, jinrou to jinrou that Toshio never could. He’d already had Seishin.

If it wasn’t for Tatsumi, Natsuno wouldn’t have survived. If Natsuno hadn’t survived, Toshio doubted he would have. 

For that matter, if it hadn’t been for Tatsumi, perhaps Seishin wouldn’t have survived. Perhaps Tatsumi had given Seishin the power to do so.

“Tatsumi is a jinrou, not a regular shiki,” Toshio murmured. “Natsuno’s bite shouldn’t be any different from his.” 

“What was it like the first time?” Seishin covered his face with his hands, almost as if he was hiding from the answer. “The first time Natsuno bit you?”

“Intense.” Toshio looked up at the ceiling. “I was alone, Seishin. I felt as if the village, everything I’d ever known had abandoned. That was the moment when he appeared.” He could still recall the moment those eerie violet eyes fixed themselves upon him. Different than the hesitant blue ones which peeked at him when he and Yuuki Natsuno first met, yet no less serious. “He offered me hope. A slender hope, but it was still hope.” Toshio lowered his head. “Natsuno led me away from the clinic into the forest. He told me his story. Seishin, he knew.” The old admiration clutched his chest, the startled acknowledgement that amidst a village of people who hid from the truth, here was one who’d chosen to face it and learn from it. “Natsuno had already figured out the dead were rising in Sotoba, all on his own. He’d already watched one of them kill his best friend in what he thought was a dream.”

Toshio pressed his hand to his forehead. “He’s the one, Seishin. I was just about to have a breakdown, unable to fight what I thought was an epidemic, killing the village, when he approached me on the street. He asked me about Shimizu Megumi, if I’d examined her, if it was possible for her to come back to life. It was Yuuki Natsuno who made me realize the truth, that the dead were rising to suck the blood of the living.”

“Was he already a jinrou?” Seishin’s eyes were wide.

“No.” Toshio shook his head. “That was the first time I met Natsuno. He ran away before I could speak. He’s a sharp boy, Seishin. He’d already figured out what it took me so long to understand, that nobody would believe a story like that.”

“You must have met him again.” Seishin’s voice was even, carefully controlled. “When he was a jinrou.”

“The second time. When he told his story. About Shimizu Megumi lurking around his window, night after night. Later she attacked Mutou Tohru in his home, right in front of Natsuno when Natsuno was spending the night with his friend.” Toshio looked straight into Seishin’s eyes. They’d returned to their soft green, like rain over a sunlit forest, the leaves reflected in a pond. “Later Mutou Tohru rose and attacked Natsuno. Again and again, even though Natsuno begged his friend to try and escape with him.”

“I heard. I met Mutou Tohru in the woods one night. Weeping over murdering Natsuno.” Seishin frowned a bit. “Did Natsuno react to being fed on the way the shiki victims did? He slowly weakened, only to have trouble breathing?”

Like I did. Seishin didn’t say the words out loud. He didn’t need to. 

“Yes. At least I got the impression from his story that’s what happened.” Toshio bit his lower lip. “He rose much faster than most of the shiki we encountered. He returned to life right when his father entered his bedroom with the funeral team.”

“I imagine that must have been quite a shock,” Seishin observed with a measure of dryness. Yuuki-san from the aetelier had not been the most open-minded or imaginative of people for all his unconventional ways. It had always struck Muroi Seishin as odd that such a man would wish to bring his family to the countryside. He, Natsuno-kun, and Natsuno-kun’s mother had stuck out like canaries among a flock of sparrows. 

“Quite.” Toshio smiled without humour. He’d had the dubious pleasure of dealing with Natsuno’s father a few times before Natsuno shared his secrets with him. Yuuki-san had grimaced at anything out of the ordinary, refusing to accept it, even if it was happening right under his nose. 

Being the worst of the skeptics, Yuuki-san had been greatly altered by what happened in Sotoba. What youth he possessed had withered, sucked out of his very skin. 

The shiki had other ways of draining the life out of a man besides drinking his blood. Not that Yuuki-san held the shiki responsible for the tragic events. 

Too well did Toshio recall the last time he’d met the man.

“You killed my son.” Heat had flashed in his dark blue eyes, making them flash with an almost inhuman light. Unlike his boy, Yuuki-san was just a mortal. A frail, angry mortal. “You with your cursed crusade, your damned witch hunt. You burned my Natsuno along with the rest of the village.” The frail man had drawn himself up, baring his teeth at the former doctor. They’d been dull, white, and ordinary. “Get out. Get away from me. I never want to see your face again. If any okiagari survived, I hope they eat you.”

Not that Koide Azusa-san, Natsuno’s mother had been much more coherent. 

“That village, that place.” She’d rested her melancholy eyes upon him. They were the same troubled blue as Natsuno’s when he’d been human. “I’d hoped that a child could be a child there. Yuuki-kun hoped the same thing. Only they can’t.” Koide Azusa had raised a trembling hand to cover her face. “What sort of a place does such a terrible thing to children? Killing them and resurrecting them as monsters?”

“You knew?” Toshio had balled his hand into a fist. “How could you just walk away if you knew? How could you leave your son to face all that?”  
“Knew? Yes, there was something strange about Shizuka Matsuo when she came to visit a couple more times after the first night.” Azusa lay a hand against her neck. “I couldn’t deal with it. She never told me not to walk away.”

No, neither one of Natsuno’s parents had been much help in finding Natsuno. It appeared that Koide Azusa had been a shiki’s meal a few times herself. Toshio doubted she or Yuuki-san would have been particularly useful allies during the tragic times in Sotoba. Certainly not to their son. 

Would Natsuno have come to Ozaki Toshio, a perfect stranger, if they had been?

“Natsuno told me he could eat, walk in the sun, but he craved blood. When he met me, he’d managed to keep himself from attacking anyone.” Toshio met Seishin’s eyes. “I decided to feed him, Seishin. I don’t regret that decision.”

“Didn’t it bother you to willingly bare your throat to one of the shiki?” Seishin turned his head slightly, giving Toshio a sideways glance. “I can tell it bothers you that I offered Tatsumi my wrist.”

“It was your wrist?” Toshio released a breathe he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “What was it like?”

“Pleasurable. A languid sort of pleasure ran through my entire body, weakening me. It was as if Death himself was seducing me and I was willing to be seduced.” Seishin looked up at Toshio with eyes narrow and cool as jade. “I’m guessing that’s not what it was like with Natsuno.”

“No, although Chizuru’s bite confused things. It was as if one force was trying to quell me and the other to energize me.” Toshio pressed a hand against his head, recalling the warring sensation of throbbing in his temples, head, neck, running down to his chest. Be ours entirely. Be true to yourself. “I’ve never been exhausted when it’s been just Natsuno. Quite the contrary.”

“You must be the most fortunate of vampire victims,” Seishin said with utter dryness. “Instead of being seduced by death, you’re seduced by life in the form of a lithesome young boy, who is somehow the contradiction among shiki. It sounds too good to be true.”

“That’s just it. It is.” Toshio dropped his hand. “Seishin, I’ve never seen Natsuno as one of the shiki. He’s never felt that way to me.”

The time Yuuki Natsuno said that all shiki would be dead, including him, Ozaki Toshio thought his heart would stop. Pain ran through his arms, twisting through his limbs. 

At that time, he’d thought it was just a reaction to the vampire bite, the victim’s addiction to his undead master. 

Only Toshio wasn’t sure if Yuuki Natsuno was undead. Not in the way he’d come to regard the shiki as being. 

“I marvel that you’re able to speak to me about this.” Seishin lifted a hand to touch his wrist. “Yet you look so enraged whenever I mention Tatsumi feeding on me.” 

“What’s your point?” Toshio scowled at the reminder. “Did you expect me to be happy about what he did to you?”

“Do you expect me to be happy about what Natsuno is doing to you?” Seishin countered. “You talk to me, wanting to point out the special nature of your vampire lover’s condition, how he’s different than other shiki. How he’s not really a shiki.” 

“Who else am I going to talk to?” Toshio lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “Seishin, my first impulse is still to confide everything to you, no matter how painful or embarrassing. It’s a hard habit to break.”

“As are you.” Seishin backed away a step. “Look at you.” He pointed a finger with accusing steadiness at Toshio. “Your face is full of color, you’ve stopped smoking, you’ve got more energy than you’ve possessed since we were teenagers.” Seishin dropped his hand. “You seem happier than you’ve ever been.” His lips quivered. “Certainly happier than you ever were with me.”

“How dare you?” Toshio glared at his friend, the stiff posture of self righteousness, passive aggressive in the rigid set of his chin. “You’re the one who left me! You left me before I ever got to know Natsuno!”

“I didn’t know I was betraying you! I didn’t know what Sunako was!” Seishin pressed a hand over his lips. “Is it my fault that a vampire child saw something in my work which no one else had? Something which left me unable to dismiss her as a monster?”

“I’m not talking about Sunako!” Toshio snarled. “I’m talking about how you nearly killed yourself!” The snarl was becoming a scream. “You left me, Seishin! You were more than willing to leave me with nothing but a corpse!”

Silence fell between them, thick and heavy as a wall.

Toshio took a sharp, angry breath. It sounded as loud as a hissing snake in his own ears. 

“Toshio.” Seishin lifted a pale hand as if he meant to ward off his friend’s words. “I didn’t mean to leave you behind. I certainly didn’t mean for you to find…my body.”

“Who did you think would find it?” Toshio grabbed the slender fingers as if he could crush them. “I was the heir to the Ozaki. I was your closest friend.” He thrust his face close to Seishin’s. “Not that it mattered. You were going to bleed out your life.” Toshio leaned his forehead to allow it rest against his former friend’s. “You were so desperate to escape, you’d abandon me along with everyone else. You’re selfish, Seishin.”

“Yes, I’m selfish.” Seishin didn’t move away, allowed his face to rest against Toshio’s. “I let you go in all my selfishness and another vampire took you from me.” Lips moved; cold, yet full, soft, and somehow inviting. “Do you wish for a confession? For me to admit that I regret these things?”

The former priest raised his hands, an artist’s hands to the level of Toshio’s shoulders. They trembled for a moment before they reached out to touch him. “Because I do.”

“Seishin.” Toshio stopped thinking, stopped worrying about divided loyalties, complications, or anything. 

He leaned forward and did what he should have done years ago. He claimed those inviting lips and pressed his own against them. 

For a moment, Seishin stiffened before he softened. He opened his mouth and yielded to the kiss. 

They fumbled for each other, tasted each other, all the quiet yearning, all the secret glances, and unspoken sentiments, hiding behind duty and village roles, tumbling free in a dance of tongues.

Seishin pulled away first. He backed up a step and held up a hand to cover his mouth. 

Not fast enough. Toshio caught a glimpse of fang. 

“You do feel some hunger for me,” Toshio murmured, dazed with wonder. “I thought once I’d been claimed by another vampire, my blood would lose its appeal.”

“I thought so, too. I tried so hard to resign myself to letting you go.” Seishin pressed his hand over his mouth, hiding the evidence of what he was. Not that he could. Darkness swallowed the light in his eyes, turning everything black. Only the twin crimson circles gleamed within the midnight shade. “I never dreamed something like this could happen.”

“I miss you,” Toshio whispered. “Seishin, you think I don’t miss you every day? That I don’t curse myself for letting you walk away from me?” He lifted his hand to touch the cool white cheek. “Because I do.”

“You can’t give up Natsuno.” Seishin sighed as if he was a mortal man who still needed to breathe. “This I know only too well.”  
“Natsuno is the one who believes some part of what we once were can be saved.” Toshio dropped his hand, lifted it to run through his unruly hair. “I want so badly to believe he was right.”

“And what were we, Toshio?” Seishin clenched one hand into a fist and shut his eyes. “What was I to you?”

The question hovered in the air for a moment. There were so many things Toshio could have said. There were so many things Muroi Seishin had been. 

There was one Ozaki Toshio had never been able to admit, even to himself. 

“The man I love.” Toshio let his arm drop and dangle, limp and helpless at his side. “The one person, the one part of Sotoba I can’t let go of.” 

“Oh, Toshio.” Seishin pressed his fist against his forehead. “This…this is too much…this…”

“Yeah. Of course it is.” Toshio tilted his head, exposing his neck. Not that there was much point in teasing the jinrou. Not when he’d shut his eyes. “Even though I can touch you, you’re still out of reach.”

“I was always falling. Falling from grace, falling in other’s people’s expectations. Even yours.” Seishin unclenched his fingers and peeked through them. A glimmer of red flickered behind the barrier of flesh. “I’m still falling.”

“And I could never catch you.” Toshio lowered his head. “Won’t you give me a chance to?”

Seishin lowered his hand. He gazed at his former friend with midnight orbs, red circles gleaming with a bleak pride. “Am I truly something you want to catch?”

There it was, the darkness which had been lurking outside Sotoba. It had waited outside the Ozaki clinic until it invaded. Perhaps it had been there all their lives, Toshio and Seishin’s, in one form or another.  
“I suppose I shouldn’t promise anything. I’ve never been able to hold onto anyone.” Toshio smiled straight into that ebon stare. “All I did was rage and tremble until someone caught me.”

“I wish I could have caught you. I was too absorbed in my own fall.” The darkness retreated into the whites of Seishin’s eyes. “I’d like to believe you could catch me, Toshio.”

“All we’ve got are wishes. You know, we’re really pathetic.” Toshio let out a weak chuckle. “Watching each other out of the corner of our eyes, yet too preoccupied with our own misery. Someone else had to nudge us.”

“Toshio.” Seishin lifted his hand, only to allow it to fall at his side. “Where do you wish to go from here?”

Another question which hung in the air, leaving it humming with its intensity. 

Toshio could avoid or dodge it. Answer it with another question. Seishin would let him get away with it.

No. The truth was too important. He had to admit it.

“I don’t know.” Toshio ran a hand through his hair. “Things aren’t as they were. Perhaps they never can be.”

“Perhaps we don’t want them to be?” Seishin murmured in a hushed voice. “Perhaps something new can be built, bit by bit?”

“Perhaps. I’m not sure of anything anymore.” Toshio bit his lip. “It’s so easy to talk to you, too easy, yet you abandoned me when I needed you most.”

“You can’t forgive me. I’m not sure if I can forgive you either.” Seishin bowed his head. “You replaced me with a virile young jinrou.”

“You’re a jinrou, too.” Toshio felt his lips twitch. “How virile you are is up to you.”

“Oh, Toshio.” Seishin smiled, yet his eyes were moist with unshed tears. “Part of me will always yearn to kiss you, but you belong to Natsuno now. I can still smell him all over you.”

“I doubt this is something you or I have to explain to Natsuno.” A lump rose in Toshio’s throat at the thought of his little vampire. Leaning close, offering whatever would ease Toshio’s pain. 

Including Seishin.

“He’s a remarkable jinrou, I’ll give you that.” Seishin smiled for a moment. “If you were mine, I doubt I could ever let you go.”

“He’s not letting me go.” Panic squeezed the lump in Toshio’s throat at the thought of being abandoned. “I’ve always been free.”

“Toshio, once a vampire bites you, that’s no longer true.” Seishin dropped his chin. “You know this better than anyone.”

“Natsuno gave me freedom. In fact he commanded me to hold onto my own free will when he bit me.” Part of him cringed at this confession. Was he betraying Natsuno?

No. Who would it hurt? Only Toshio himself if it was revealed. 

Perhaps this was a test. Would Muroi Seishin keep his former friend’s confidence. Or would he betray Toshio to Sunako or Tatsumi? Just how much of the old Seishin he’d loved existed within the newly born jinrou who’d risen from the ashes of Sotoba?

Toshio needed to know. Before Seishin had a chance to get close to him and break his heart once more. 

It would be only too easy to let it happen. Again. 

**Author's Note:**

> The lines "We're more than just tools for our family lines!" and "We deserve to live freely." are direct translations from a flashback in the Shiki anime as is Toshio's first response, "Hn?" I came up with Toshio's second retort. Once again, Shiki doesn't belong to me, yet it keeps giving me what if scenarios for what could have happened...:)=


End file.
